G.I. Joe: Rise of Cobra

Review By: Ryan Hamelin
RyanHamelin@TheCinemaSource.com

Movie Grade: B

After all the negative hype, after all the spin, after the positive reviews from the handful of geeks that Paramount decided to show it to, G.I. Joe has been released out into the world to see how it fairs with a general public that has made Transformers Revenge of the Fallen the number one movie of the year with close to $800 million in box office world wide. The film is also based on a Hasbro toy line, includes a handful of up and coming “stars” to offset the heavy use of visual fx, and yes, the pyramids are in this one too.

The main difference between the two films is that while Michael Bay grounded Transformers in a very modern and recognizable world, G.I. Joe is a living cartoon. When Bay needed an aircraft carrier, they filmed on an aircraft carrier. When Stephen Sommers, who also directed Van Helsing and the first two Mummy movies, needed an aircraft carrier, he let the computer artists who just got done with the latest Xbox 360 game build one for him. In the past Sommers has gotten hammered for his use, and overuse, of CG effects. Here, he uses them to accentuate the phoniness of the world he created, or at least, I hope he is. The only other explanation is that the CG is just god-awful. I’m going to pray that it had some artistic intent, but I fear I may be giving credit where credit isn’t due.

That’s just the look of the film, a just-this-side-of-your-current-video-game-console feel that makes every ship and base instantly translatable to a plastic toy. If you were, in fact, a 10-year-old kid, this may very well be the G.I. Joe movie you would envision in your head. In fact, the cheese level of the film is one that probably only kids from that age group would truly enjoy, or adults who are still very in tune with their own youthful selves. The actors do decently with what they’re given with the exception of Dennis Quaid, the one person I thought I could rely on in a film like this, who gives a performance that manages to out-ham the source material. Honestly, everybody else looks subtle by comparison. The storyline, a perfect fit for a Saturday morning cartoon, manages to go into great detail about the backstories of almost every character due to an absurd amount of flashback sequences that the audience really couldn’t care less about. It stalls out what little modern-day plot is occurring, and doesn’t do much beyond appeasing some hardcore fans. Viewed as a whole, the overall story arc is simple enough to follow along with, while bringing nothing very interesting or revolutionary to a formula already decades old. At least, unlike Transformers 2, the jumps from point to point are reasonable and bring the audience, grudgingly, along for the ride.

Here’s where my reviewing scheme comes along and bites me in the ...